Why the poor vote the way they do

God, the quip goes, must love poor people because He made so many. The mystery is why, given their numbers, the poor aren't more politically powerful.

Larry Bartels, a Princeton University political scientist and director of the university's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, has written a new and extraordinarily insightful -- and pessimistic -- book about the link between economic inequality and political impotence. You can't read "Unequal Democracy"-- published by the Princeton University -- without the tune jangling in your head:

"There's nothing surer ... The rich get rich and the poor get poorer."

That's the 1921 ditty "Ain't We Got Fun?" that became the unofficial anthem of pre-Depression days -- a time that is looking very much like these days.

Bartels starts with the undeniable facts -- the income gap between the rich and the poor and middle classes has radically expanded. This era is, he contends, is a "New Gilded Age" of wealth living beside the struggles of a disappearing middle class.

"That's pretty straightforward," says Bartels.

But he refutes the idea that extremes in income are the unavoidable consequence of market forces that cannot be changed politically. An early chapter opens with a 2006 statement from U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the man now in charge of the politically forged economic bailout of the financial industry:

"As our economy grows, market forces work to provide the greatest rewards to those with the needed skills in the growth areas. This trend is simply an economic reality, and it is neither fair nor useful to blame any political party."

Using detailed statistical analyses, Bartels demonstrates that, at least in the last 60 years, the income gap between the rich and the rest of us widened at full gallop during Republican administrations and narrowed during Democratic administrations.

What is startling about Bartels' analysis is neither the income gap nor its cyclical nature -- but the political complicity of the disadvantaged themselves. The poor and the middle class often vote for the very politicians who do them in economically.

It has a lot to do with timing. He shows the benefits of Democrat-backed economic expansion -- infrastructure repair, for example -- often comes early in their administrations and slows as their terms are ending. By contrast, the pain of Republican-backed policies -- often aimed at curbing inflation -- comes at the start of their terms.

"Voters often live in the now -- that is not new," says Bartels. "They forget the good times -- and the pain."

There's more. The political scientist traces the support given by poor and middle-income families to policies that could not possibly help them, like tax cuts for the rich.

"It's interesting that, when policies are put forward to help the poor and middle class -- like expanded educational support -- we are told we can't afford it. Yet, somehow, we have been told we can afford massive bailouts of the rich, and those policies often are supported by the middle classes."

In addition to myopia, he says, poorer families identify with problems of the rich. He calls this an "aspirational" motivation for working against economic interest. We all are raised, he says, to believe we could be rich some day -- and, in any event, the popular media focuses on the "problems" of wealthy people, not on the problems of the poor.

Bartels argues that political elites on both sides -- Democrats and Republicans -- ignore the needs and wishes of the bottom third of the economic classes and he provides case studies -- the Bush tax cuts and the minimum-wage fight -- to prove his point.

That works in odd ways. Another study -- the repeal of the federal estate tax -- shows how Democrats in Congress ignored the will of working-class voters by opposing repeal despite its vast popularity among the non-affluent. A popularity that had nothing to do with economic self-interest because the poor stood to gain nothing from repeal.

Bartels is not optimistic. While income gaps might widen and narrow, ultimately the political impotence of the poor and a shrinking middle class contributes to their economic problems -- and that, to complete the loop, adds to their impotence.